Entertaining myself by watching what ESPN News chooses to show of Media Day. Which, considering all the bedlum that has to be going on, really isn't that much. What they've shown of the Patriots - the players have been thoughtful and well spoken as a whole. Just what you would expect from this team. I really wish they'd just set up a camera and show us everything, espically all those crazy questions we only seem to hear about and not see.

And I'd kill for some real baseball news. Well, ok. Red Sox news. All that seems to be around at the moment is the Sosa to the O's stuff. That and apparently Arod got called to the principal's office. Or maybe the woodshed would be the more appropriate term.

Yankees owner George Steinbrenner summoned Alex Rodriguez to Tampa last month to deliver a face-to-face message to his third baseman: It's
time to assert yourself on this team. Often using coarse language, Steinbrenner told Rodriguez to take more of a leadership role on and off the
field, according to a baseball source who was briefed on the meeting.

"I didn't bring you here to be just one of the guys," Steinbrenner said, according to the source.

Cool. More pressure. Judging on what happened in ALCS games 5-7 last year (plus the last half of game 4) I think that may be a good thing. I
also speculate that both the incidents of Arod/Arroyo might have sprung from exactly this kind of "pressure". I think Arod was trying to take on this "leadership role" and failed miserably. In the first incident, he only spurred the Sox on to a come back win, and help to gel them as a cohesieve team. And in the slap-play . . . well, who else thinks that the Purse Pic (tm) will be featured prominatly on signs in the park in the upcoming season? And besides providing Sox Nation wtth tons of future ammo, he also helped to cost his team that important game. Not only
did he make the out, he cost them a runner in scoring postition. Bring on the pressure!

And speaking of the ALCS. I watched bits and pieces of ALCS Game One last night on NESN (I was going to watch the seventh inning in entirety but my cable went fffzzttt) and it struck me - how different the whole feeling was for the first half of the series, as opposed to the second half. And I don't mean that just because they won and lost. But the way the games felt in the pregames, the first inning, before the wins and the losses were set. To me games 1-3 were a set, games 5-7 were a set and game 4 was a dividing line. And again, I don't mean that in hindsight. They felt that way from the pregames into the first pitches and on from there. And game 4 was the wall dividing the two. I think that perception is reinforced in my brain because game 4 is the only one I didn't see on TV. I actually got to go to that game (I'll post more on that later. Maybe on the NESN rebroadcast/anniversery). But the first three games I was all tense and rocking worse than Terry. And then I was in Fenway and there was cheering and screaming and nailbiting and more cheering and screaming. And then it seemed like that series was over, and another three game series took its place. I probably make no sense. But I do feel like there were 2 ALCS's in a way. And we won the one that counted.